Masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carrying long guns swept through working-class neighborhoods in San Juan, Puerto Rico between October 22-25. About a dozen workers, largely Dominican immigrants, were reportedly detained from Río Piedras, Capetillo, Villa Palmeras, Villa Capri, and Barrio Obrero. Local leaders and community members have expressed outrage over the ICE deployment to the island. Protests have also broken out, demanding ICE out of Puerto Rico and elevating calls for independence from the United States.

During the operations, federal agents claimed that they were detaining criminals, but locals say they were all hard working people, many with families.

Elected officials speak out against ICE deployment

The Dominican Republic sits about 50 miles from Puerto Rico. Dating back to the pre-Colombian era, the Caribbean has always been closely linked by migration and maritime mobility. There has never been a time where the islands existed in isolation.

That might help explain why immigration arrests and deportations are being met with such deep rejection.

Puerto Rico’s Senate opposition spokesman, Luis Javier Hernández Ortiz and the mayor of San Juan, Miguel Romero have all condemned the ICE raids.

Romero ordered the municipal police to not assist federal agents with any ICE operations. The island’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) branch also condemned the raids and characterized the operations as a pattern of violence and intimidation.

“We strongly reject the massive deployment of ICE agents who, in a threatening manner and armed with long guns, continue occupying the streets,” said Annette Martínez Orabona, executive director of the ACLU of PR, in a statement.

ICE had no judicial warrant for anyone they arrested, said the legal director of ACLU of PR, Fermín L. Arraiza-Havas, speaking to El Grito Media.

Local officials blame the island government’s alleged “voluntary handover” of data for making the sweeping operations possible.

Puerto Rican government collaborates with ICE

The ACLU of PR says the Puerto Rican government gave ICE the personal information of thousands of immigrant drivers, in violation of a 2013 confidentiality law. The information was handed over by Transportation Secretary Edwin González and Governor of Puerto Rico Jenniffer González-Colón.

“The laws in Puerto Rico protected that information,” said ACLU’s Arraiza-Havas to El Grito Media.

In a statement provided to The San Juan Daily Star, ACLU’s Martínez Orabona accused the governor of facilitating the federal immigration raids by “providing residential addresses and confidential information belonging to more than 6,000 immigrants residing in Puerto Rico.”

“Both the federal and state governments are responsible for the escalation of violence that we are seeing from ICE,” Martínez Orabona said.

The ACLU of PR held a press conference on October 15, where they made public the mass data sharing between the Puerto Rican government and ICE.

Border czar Tom Homan then visited Puerto Rico on Oct 21-22 to review immigration enforcement efforts and operational challenges, according to The Washington Post. 

ICE raids began the next day.

Locals confront federal agents as raids sweep Dominican neighborhoods

Various videos have circulated online, where community members can be seen surrounding ICE vehicles and confronting agents, most of whom spoke English, as they arrested individuals. One restaurant worker reportedly refused to let agents enter as they tried to follow a man they claimed was a criminal. The agents eventually left.

ICE agents can also be seen in various videos threatening community defenders with pepper spray and tasers for legally recording their operations, as community members yell “Don’t touch me!” and “They’re taking hard working people from here, what a shame!”

In at least one account, a Puerto Rican citizen (all Puerto Ricans are US citizens by birth) was stopped by a group of ICE agents who demanded his ID.

The arrests have raised questions about racial profiling, citizen’s rights, as well as questions about the political direction of Puerto Rico.

Colonialism or independence?

Protests broke out in the neighborhoods targeted by ICE on Monday, October 26. The Fire Ants of Rio Piedras led a march, holding a banner that read “Heat for ICE Not for My Community” and “ICE Out!” Large groups of children and youth participated in the march.

In a statement, the Feminist Collective PR, also part of the protests, said, “We reject this pathetic, collaborationist government that loves to bend its knees to Washington in exchange for nothing.”

They argued that the same government that collaborates with the feds to hand over their Caribbean brothers and working people is also selling off the country piece by piece to foreigners coming to displace the Puerto Rican people. The group asserted that the foreigners that need to be removed are not Dominicans, but people like the Reuben Brothers – two British billionaires developing a multi-billion dollar resort and residential megaproject on the southwest coast.

“The US has no moral integrity to stand on to come tell us here who can be our neighbors and who can’t.”

Mounting resistance has also brought the call for Puerto Rican independence back into the spotlight.

“ICE raids in Puerto Rico are colonial terrorism,” said Boricuas Unidos en la Diáspora, in a statement released on X. 

The group declared that ICE activity is part of the colonial status quo. The only two political options from here are: statehood, which they argue would only strengthen and perpetuate US federal control over Puerto Rico, and independence. 

“If you don’t want ICE roaming the streets of Puerto Rico, you have to support our nation’s independence,” the group said.

“It’s that simple.”

A regional coalition convened as part of a U.S. military effort to disrupt and combat drug traffickers that officials have compared to the campaign against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

© Enea Lebrun/Reuters

Organizers warn that weaker tariff protections could threaten domestic rice production, jobs and food security.

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Social and political groups in the Dominican Republic are protesting a government decision to scrap tariff protections for domestically produced rice, warning that the move could expose local farmers to increased import competition.

RELATED: ICE Agent Shoots Dominican Man in New York, Sparking Protests

The Broad Front (Frente Amplio) and the Jesús Adón Popular Bloc (Bloque Popular Jesús Adón) have called for a march in Nagua on Sunday, Oct. 25, demanding stronger government measures to protect domestic rice production. The demonstration is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. at the town’s main park, on the road toward San Francisco de Macorís. Organizers have urged farmers, agricultural workers, traders and social organizations across the northeastern region to take part.

The protest centers on Decree 635-26, issued by President Luis Abinader on Sept. 9, 2026, which repealed Decree 693-24. The previous measure established a tariff system intended to shield locally produced rice from international competition.

#DOMINICANA | Tras intensas presiones de Estados Unidos, el Gobierno dominicano derogó la medida arancelaria que protegía la producción nacional de arroz. Organizaciones sociales y productores denuncian que la eliminación de estas salvaguardas bajo el tratado DR-CAFTA vulnera la… pic.twitter.com/ZCVO0Om8iz

— teleSUR TV (@teleSURtv) October 23, 2026

Text Reads: Following intense pressure from the United States, the Dominican Government repealed the tariff measure that protected the national rice production. Social organizations and producers denounce that the elimination of these safeguards under the DR-CAFTA treaty violates the country’s food sovereignty.

Under the former rules, certain imports within the tariff-rate quota faced a 20% tariff, while imports exceeding the quota were subject to a 99% rate. The system allowed 23,300 metric tons of rice from the United States to enter the Dominican market duty-free, with imports above that volume subject to the higher tariff.

María Teresa Cabrera, president of the Broad Front, said the decision to remove the protections stemmed from external commercial pressure linked to bilateral negotiations with the United States over access to the Dominican agricultural market.

Cabrera warned that weakening tariffs could undermine a sector encompassing more than 30,000 producers and supporting tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs. Rice production also sustains related economic activities, including transportation, supply and marketing.

“Rice is not just another commodity: it is an essential food for the Dominican people and the livelihood of thousands of farming and working families. Weakening domestic production to favor imports could have economic and social consequences extending far beyond the countryside. Food security is also a matter of national sovereignty,” Cabrera said.

The decision has also raised concerns among agricultural organizations, which are seeking clarity on the safeguards and competitiveness measures the government intends to introduce to protect domestic production.

The Dominican government has said it is pursuing diplomatic and commercial negotiations with international counterparts to renegotiate the terms while maintaining controls on rice imports.

The planned march comes as agricultural groups press the government for assurances that domestic rice producers will remain protected under any revised trade arrangements.

Gus Garcia-Roberts follows Belfi Rivera, a Major League Baseball prospect from the Dominican Republic, through an unregulated recruitment system that exposes young athletes to a network of predatory figures (and at least one former World Series MVP and prominent Fox Sports analyst). It’s a system that operates in plain sight and has for years, but Garcia-Roberts’s superbly reported narrative, which centers on Rivera and his vulnerable family, make those operations positively harrowing.

As a child, Belfi never cared for baseball. He started playing at 7, he told me, because a local coach would drag him from his house and cuff him on the head if he tried to escape to a nearby river to be with his friends. But even as a young boy, he understood the sport likely represented his family’s one shot out of grinding poverty. During that video call in 2021, it seemed that he had clinched it. 

But in two and a half years, the $1.8 million Belfi was promised would be almost all gone. Carmona received $630,000, which represented his 35% commission. But more than $950,000 went to someone who had no hand in teaching Belfi how to play baseball. His name is Santo Caraballo, one of the most notorious moneylenders profiting from Dominican baseball. His business partner is a national hero and, 10 years after his retirement, still a commanding figure within Major League Baseball: David Ortiz, known universally as “Big Papi.”